So about two months ago, I was thinking, well, hey, LIFE FROM THE CHEAP SEATS is on hiatus, but why not work on the web presence. A few people had shown an interest in my products, but really there wasn’t much at which to look. At the time I had a Lawren t-shirt, which I had made because Lawren wanted it for his class reunion, and I had a Nicole t-shirt in which one of her friends had expressed an interest. Being the cheap man that I am (see the title of my comic), I didn’t want to pay for the full café press store and I didn’t want to continue with the limit of one image per type of product that the free store offers. In my defense, I had only sold two products, and my comic was on hiatus so a paid store didn’t seem the best of options.

So I asked around and found that Zazzle offered a store with an unlimited number of images per product type. And for FREE! I was sold.

I quickly setup my Zazzle account and began adding to the store. I wanted a variety of products ready for my strips return. Is this putting the cart before the horse? Perhaps; but I also know that when I am in the midst of producing the comic I don’t have a ton of time for also producing product. This was my head start.

First I created a basic product for each character – A Brandon t-shirt, a Nicole ladies t with pink ringer, a polo for myself, the bright Lawren shirt, and a hat for John. With those basic products lined up, I decided to create some strip clothes and some prints. That way, if anyone was emotionally attached to any particular comic they could have their own print or wear the strip. This seemed like a great idea, or at least a marginally decent idea, to me.

With that in mind, I looked through my files and I found the four strips with which I had had the proper presence of mind to create in a high resolution format and I got to work setting up the product. I even pulled out a few panels for their own products – such as the Brandon String Trick shirt and the Brandon Cannon t-shirt. Things were going well.

I also set up a few products that you will not find in my stores.

You see, about a week after creating my new product line, I received an interesting email from Zazzle. Some of my products were to be removed for violating copyright. Now, I figured, I had copyright marks on some my strips, so perhaps they assumed I was not the owner of the copyright. With this in my mind, I wrote in to the customer support.

Lo and behold, I received a prompt reply (their customer service actually was quite excellent), which explained to me that some big media company (which I shall not name here), had written them requesting that my products be removed for copyright violation. Apparently pop culture references on products is a no-no. Who knew?

At first I was furious. All the art was mine. All the writing was mine. And the mention of this pop culture reference was entirely an homage. I adore this show/product/pop culture icon that shall not be named, created by this giant media company that shall not be named. And I watch TV. Pop culture references are made constantly in the creative world. Why was this one not acceptable?

In time, I settled into the idea that I would just have to say goodbye to that product line. But with that time, also came paranoia. How did they find my store? A store for a webcomic on hiatus. A webcomic, which at this point had a readership of roughly 100 people. It made no sense. And if they found the products, did they find the comic? Was I not allowed to reference the world at large in my own comic? What were the possible repercussions? Damage control mode began.

I promptly stopped making new products. I curbed an entire plot line from the upcoming strips. And I began to rethink the safety of the strip that already existed on my website.

Then something else donned on me. A big media company took notice of my comic… or at least my comic’s store. My little comic blog had gained attention. Sure it wasn’t the attention that I wanted, but there it was none-the-less. In many ways, this in itself slowly became the bulwark that bolstered my confidence – the needed kick in the ass that motivated me to continue with my work. I am creative person, and anyone who knows a creative person, knows that our self-confidence, at least when it comes to our own creative work, is shaky at best. But now I knew… I did have the power to be noticed.

And now I’m back. And the moral of the story? Specifically, be careful what you put in your webstores (if you have them), and generally, take the attention you can get and roll with it.

”Won’t You Be My Valentine,” our latest strip, may be somewhat disingenuous. True, between Nicole and myself, I am far more likely to be the one pushing for a romantic Valentine’s dinner, or, more likely than that, a romantic anniversary dinner, or, even more likely, to remember the date of any anniversary – be it when we began dating or when we got married – but, in all honesty, the chances of us actually carrying through with a Valentine’s dinner are rather slim.

There is something disconcerting about forced romance, about the expectation that on this date above all others you must show your affection. If Nicole expected that sort of relationship from me, or I from her, this marriage would be doomed. I am not a man for grand gestures – simple gestures, sure, but grand, no. I do not exist in a world of movie style romance.

In the world of the cinema, and television, Valentine’s Day would seem to call for the extreme. With the working spouse, he or she might as well expect to be surprised by an office full of stuffed animals, chocolate candies and roses from wall to wall. My mind boggles at this excess. Hell, I cringe at the cost of a mere dozen roses, and, much as I love her, Nicole’s damn lucky she doesn’t like them… because I’m cheap. Plus, I prefer the gift of me continuing to pay my share of the bills over a gesture that bankrupts me. I’m silly that way.

Just think of Ross from Friends, Ted from How I Met Your Mother, or any number of other lovelorn protagonists. Think of the protestations of love abundant in romantic films, from Drew Barrymore waiting on a baseball field, to Hugh Grant sneaking into a press conference to convince his love to stay with him in London, to Leo dying for Kate Winslet – this last one being way over the top. Why not, at least, ask her to take turns on that floating piece of debris? And don’t even mention Richard Gere climbing a fire escape to “save” his love and become her knight in shining armor. After paying a prostitute to stay in your hotel suite for a week it is very difficult to actually recast yourself as a pure and virtuous savior. Plus he was kind of an ass in that movie. Watch it again. It’s there. With two decades between now and the movie’s initial glow, it becomes far easier to see the protagonist for the true jerk that he is in this film (no matter his minor redemptive inclinations).

My point here is that the media has created a sense of romance as the extravagant gesture, a gesture so bold that no normal man or woman can live up to that expectation. No plan, no matter how romantic, can ever reach the ideal now engrained by the glossy romance of films. Nor should it need to meet this criteria.

Yet Valentine’s Day stands as the reigning holiday for this grand gesture. Film, commercials, and even your local supermarket try to drill home the necessity of extravagance – the idea that you must express your love in showy, and expensive, gifts, shower your significant other in wine and chocolate, and you must do it on this one day, above all others. This seems a disservice to the other 364 days.

Me, I’ll continue to express my love in small, simple, but equally meaningful gestures on a daily basis. Or maybe weekly. At the very least monthly – I am a busy person. Whatever the frequency, though, a simple can of coconut juice, a roll of sushi, or a quiet evening of Criminal Minds (or perhaps one of her shows…like The Nanny, if I must) – that’s my idea of romance. As for Valentine’s Day, while the idea seems nice at first glance, in the end I think I’ll opt out.

Of course, all that being said, I’m writing this after having finished an early Valentine’s dinner with my wife at one of our local West Hollywood haunts (The Belmont – highly recommended). So you might say we do share some notion of romance. I say to you, however, you have never seen me eating snow crab legs. If you had, you would know that this is the antithesis of romance and all things Valentine’s. But to each their own.